Brace of pairs

After a bit of a tangent as described in the previous post, and a brood lull in proceedings, a couple more pairs have reached the final stage of the production line. Two pairs of floats, each pair consisting of a bodied waggler and matching Avon

I played a bit with some different silks for the whipping...

I'm happy with the wood dye used to colour the balsa bodies, but I have got some new dyes to try, after the next batch on cork, and the batch after that that had already been dyed with the teak dye you can see here. More to follow shortly...

Something slightly different

Production of floats has been on hold a week or two whilst I spent some time putting together an extended tool rest for a friend's Proxxon DB250 lathe.

A lot of folk think it's perfect for float making, the size is certainly convenient but personally I'd like a quick-drilling tailstock and a slower minimum speed.

The factory tool rest is not only short but also aluminium and easily scored which makes smooth passes with a gouge a little awkward. Not all users are bothered as a lot would use glasspaper almost exclusively, but if you want to get a body concentric around the axis of rotation a tool on a test is essential.

Here's my offering about to be posted to the friend in bonnie Scotland...

150mm long, 12mm diameter in 303 stainless should be a little more difficult to score, although there's quite a bit of twisting force you can apply at either end due to the leverage of the longer tool rest which the alloy plate doesn't handle that well, maybe that's why Proxxon only offered the short tool rest. We'll see how the testing goes.

Meanwhile, back to the floats next post...

Interlude

For a break from the pairs or sets of near identical floats worked on recently, I picked out one of the single floats awaiting finishing, a cork on cane waggler, on which I decided to experiment with some alternative whipping. Whipping for me up until now has been like Henry Ford's model T, available in any colour so long as it's black.

So, here it is in its raw form, looking a bit chintzy like an old school tie...

And a closeup after a couple of coats of sealer and 4 or 5 coats of lacquer. 

Fortunately the red still mellowed a little despite the sealer, a couple more coats of lacquer to go and we're done

...and number four

Yet more Reg Righyni grayling floats, this time with a balsa tip and some internal reinforcement to make sure there's no problems when adjusting the float cap...

I think that's enough of those for a while, there's another design I'll be trying shortly once I've worked my way through some more of the part-finished stock

Batch number three

The next batch to emerge from the workshop, predominantly grayling floats following Reg Righyni's timeless formula, with a couple of minor modifications. These are fitted with hardwood tips for a little extra strength for the float caps, and the recommended 20swg (0.91mm) piano wire, basically spring steel, has been replaced with 1mm stainless steel.

Where the magic begins in 'Fishing Reflections'

And in addition a couple of simple balsa on cane Avon's with colour scheme inspired by the county flag..

Second new batch

The second set of finished floats from those awaiting completion in the shed.

A bodied waggler, balsa on cane, and matching crucian waggler of balsa on pheasant quill. I quite like the way the pheasant quill has turned out, it seems difficult to tell if the quill is going to show a pleasing pattern or not before the herl is removed.

Another worthwhile read

Whilst the part-finished floats seemed too good to discard but still a bit of a burden at first, it appears the spindle on the lathe I use to turn bodies now has an unacceptable amount of run out and as such is out of commission, so the old stock awaiting completion is now a blessing until a repair is possible or a replacement lathe sourced.

Every cloud and all that, I feel a new investment for the shed coming on....

New floats

Seems like the most frequent here is going to become the one where I try and justify the break in blogging. So usual stuff going on, changing priorities, other hobbies, blah.

Needless to say I shall do my best to keep updates as regular as possible. In the meantime, I've decided to try and finish the nearly sixty floats (some of which can be seen in the earlier photo below) that I've started but not yet finished, in a state from nothing more than a body and stem to just requiring the whipping and varnish.

So first up is the five floats in the following picture, a balsa on cane gudgeon float, two cork on cane grayling bobbers, a cork on cane Avon and a cork-bodied alloy-stemmed Avon (not a combination I recall seeing a large number of I admit...)

More to follow shortly


hopefully